There are over 30 million small businesses in the U.S., and over 200 million small businesses globally. These small businesses may be severely limited by a lack of knowledge regarding their respective businesses and the assets thereof. Over 85% of the small businesses that ultimately request a valuation to address these limitations do so in an effort to buy or sell a business, or to obtain financing and/or investment. Moreover, as the availability of investment monies, business loans and government grants has decreased due to a worsening in the economy, an ability to assess and reasonably present a valid valuation to the sources of such monies, grants and loans has become an absolute necessity.
This limitation on small businesses may create a ripple effect that affects other businesses. For example, retail banking entities may have difficulty increasing the numbers of or performance of small business loans; accountants may have difficulty servicing small businesses and deriving revenue therefrom; government grant issuers may have difficulty assessing the quality of prospective grant recipients; insurance agents and financial advisors may have difficulty explaining or assessing proper service levels for owners or principals of small businesses; large businesses may have difficulty assessing target acquisitions or quality partners; and legal professionals and similar service providers may have difficulty assessing quality clientele on which to focus services. As such, there exists an urgent need to generate leads and/or guidance for financiers, business brokers, service providers, service agents, and the like.
Web 2.0 applications are those applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, collaboration, and ease of use for offerings on the World Wide Web (WWW, also referred to as the Internet or a network). Web 2.0 thus provides an environment in which may be addressed the aforementioned chilling effect of the lack of understanding of, in particular, small business valuation on the transaction flow across the afore-discussed business parties. However, to date, web 2.0 technology has not been provided that addresses this lack of understanding in a uniform, easy-to-use manner, and that thereby remedies the chilling effect that this lack of understanding has on transaction flow.
Thus, there exists a need for an engine, system and method that provides an easy-to-use, highly valid, cloud-based business valuation, and that additionally provides relevant services typically associated therewith.